The Early Bird - Prior to WWII

My father, John W. Faught Sr., was born in 1917 and raised during the Depression era in Shawnee, Ohio. Like so many children during those hard times, he and his two siblings were basically raised on a nearby orphanage as my grandmother couldn't support the family by herself. During such difficult times, these types of facilities were pretty self-sufficient, raising their own crops and livestock. The vast number of chores that needed to be done each day to sustain an orphanage meant that every child (except the very youngest) had dedicated chores. My father eventually became one of the older boys on the farm; therefore he was required to handle many of the harder, labor-oriented-type chores. One of his daily tasks during the long winter months was to rise well before the other children and stoke the big potbelly stoves to ensure the others had adequate heat when they woke. This harsh upbringing developed a great sense of value within him, and he always told my brother and me that you can accomplish anything if you're willing to work hard throughout your life. He joined the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) upon leaving the orphanage and joined what proved to be one of the finest endeavors that our nation has ever undertaken. Following the CCC, he was in the Army, stationed in Europe at the end of WWII. He and several others from Ohio were assigned to a CCC camp in Idaho, tasked with building a wide variety of outdoor projects. For some odd reason (he never explained why), he was initially assigned as a cook, although he was later trained to handle high explosives for their road projects (I’m not sure about the correlation between the two jobs!). Many of the men assigned to his barracks (circa 30 men to a building) were raised in the big city and were unaccustomed to hard labor or rising early. The winters can be quite harsh in Idaho, so as you might expect, the stoves in each barracks (typically 55 gal drums that were cut in half) became a focal point to the city boys. The men all earned approximately $30 per month in wages, with most of that being sent back home to their families. My dad, accustomed to rising early as a youth, made a deal with the others in his barracks that for $1 per man, per month, he would rise an hour earlier than the others to stoke the stoves to ensure that the barracks would be warm when reveille was blown to start their day. Therefore, every payday you would find my father standing just beyond the paymaster as the monthly payroll was being doled out to each man, thus ensuring that he was immediately paid the $1 that they each owed. This enabled him to send extra funds back to my grandmother and have a little extra for himself. This truly proves that the "Early Bird" always wins. Thank you so much for letting me share this great story about my dad. What a terrific guy he was and we all miss him dearly.